Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship

Please join us in honoring and furthering Sarah’s legacy

Our brilliant colleague/partner/daughter/sister, Sarah Crump, was a paleoclimate scientist who studied past climate change in Arctic and alpine settings to better understand how our environment might change as Earth warms in the coming decades.

Unfortunately, Sarah was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer in April 2022. After a hard-fought battle, the cancer spread, and she passed peacefully on November 18th, 2022. Words can’t express how important she was to INSTAAR, CU Boulder, and so many other communities. We send deep love and sympathy to her family and friends. Her bright light will live on.

With the help of Sarah, her family, and friends, INSTAAR established a fellowship in her name just a few days before she passed. Please help us raise an endowment sufficient to support a full-year Graduate Research Fellowship, providing salary and tuition for one CU Boulder grad student each year. The fellowship will give a boost to their study of Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions and also be a lever for equity and underserved communities.

Sarah's summer fellowship

Thanks to the efforts of Sarah's family and 1200+ generous contributors, we met our first funding goal in spring 2023 and created an endowment that supports a CU Boulder grad student every summer.

The summer fellowship supports a CU Boulder graduate student whose research is centered on processes or climate history central to understanding high-latitude or high-altitude environments, through fieldwork or laboratory analysis of field collections. Preference will be given to applicants whose advisors are members of INSTAAR. We particularly encourage applications from women and/or individuals who are members of communities that are historically marginalized in the Earth sciences, including students who are Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Hispanic or Latinx.

The award (~$14,000) is sufficient to fund 50% GRA salary for the three summer months. If salary is not needed, funds may be used instead to support costs associated with fieldwork, such as travel, field assistant salaries, sampling or analytics, or similar costs tied to the primary research goals of the applicant.

Apply for the summer fellowship 

Next opportunity opens January 2025

Recipients

Q&A with Katie Gannon, Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship winner

Incoming PhD student Katie Gannon (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) has garnered this year’s Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. She will investigate greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes, working with advisor Bella Oleksy.

Q&A with Sara Padula, first recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship

We are proud to announce Sara Padula as the first recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship provides summer support for a graduate student researching Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions. We caught up with Sara to ask about her research, her summer, and life as a scientist.

Celebrating the scientific legacy of Professor Sarah E. Crump

Thanks to all who joined us in person and online to celebrate Sarah on 10 May 2023.  Her colleagues and family shared words. Sarah's partner Nodin served as MC. 

Timestamps

00:00      Nodin de Saillan: Opening remarks

01:20      Merritt Turetsky: Welcome & Sarah in the INSTAAR context

07:27      Bob Anderson:  Sarah in the GEOL context

19:30      Giff Miller: Tracking Sarah from green grad student to established professor, 44:00 with Mina Kunilusie (live from Qikiqtarjuaq)

47:25      Beth Shapiro: Sarah in the ancient DNA lab at Santa Cruz

1:01:17   Julio Sepulveda: Sarah in the Organic Geochemistry Lab     

1:15:43   Darren Larsen: The Amazing Teton lake records

1:33:43   Amelia Muscott: Coring lakes in the Tetons with Sarah

1:42:32   Sara Padula: Crump Fellowship Recipient; linking fieldwork and science

1:58:23   Cailey Condit: Fellow Grad Student

2:06:13   John Crump: A father’s perspective on Sarah and Science

2:15:00   Nodin de Saillan: Concluding remarks

2:17:25   The end

The event was followed by a light lunch, cold drinks and conversations on the SEEC second floor patio (walk through the Bartlett Center, above the Auditorium)

Video clips of Sarah's 2017 fieldwork on Baffin Island (Zach Montes, Orijin Media). These clips (no audio) were shown on a loop as the crowd gathered to celebrate Sarah's scientific legacy. Scroll lower on this page to see a wonderful, 3-minute video of the fieldwork, including interviews with Sarah. 

Sarah's science background

Sarah received her PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), was a Postdoc at UC-Santa Cruz, and recently started an Assistant Professorship at the University of Utah's Department of Geology & Geophysics. She led field work in the Tetons and Baffin Island, Arctic Canada, and spent countless hours in labs in Boulder, Colorado; Perth, Australia; and Santa Cruz, California.

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Examples of her work

Scientific American article on how sediments from frigid lakes on Baffin Island tell the story of climate change over the past 10,000 years.

 

Science Magazine article on mud cores showing how Arctic plants responded to past climate shifts.

Baffin Island: 2017 Field Season (3 min)

 

Community was her jam

To say that Sarah was a beloved and respected member of the scientific community (not to mention every other community she touched) would be an understatement. Sarah's family kept a throughout the course of her illness and a November 5, 2022 post (Cascade of Love!) garnered notes of support from hundreds of loved ones, including scores of Sarah’s fellow scientists, recognizing her contributions to her field and more generally her kind and generous nature. Sarah was always particularly passionate about creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for women and other underrepresented groups in the scientific community, and that passion shines through in these notes. 

Click on a photo to zoom

Nunavut Arctic College students with hard-earned lake sediment core, obtained in chilly -25ºC conditions! Sarah Crump is in middle of back row.
Simon Pendleton, David Harning, Chris Florian, and Sarah Crump move tons of cores into a new cold storage facility.
Sarah Crump works with Wendy Roth, Darren Larsen, and Chris Florian to set up a new core splitter
Sarah Crump and Greg de Wet share a laugh break before returning to fieldwork preparation on Baffin Island. Photo by Zach Montes, Orijin Media
Darren Larsen & Sarah Crump take a sediment core from a raft on Delta Lake, Grand Tetons. Photo by Kory Kirchner
Shooting a film for the CU Graduate School about beryllium dating. Photo by Hugo Cordova
Sarah Crump and Nodin de Saillan, loaded up with big backpacks and gear, pose on the rocky landscape of Baffin Island
Jonathan Raberg, a senator staff member, and Sarah Crump pose after meeting with Senator Cory Garner's office to talk earth science funding and climate policy
Aria Blumm and Sarah Crump with backpacks of coring gear on a snow-covered lake in the Grand Tetons
Greg de Wet, Giff Miller (Sarah's PhD advisor), and Sarah Crump take a fieldwork break and share a drink
Nicolas Young, Sarah Crump, Simon Pendleton, and Gordie Audlakiak stand on a dock preparing to depart icy and cloudy Qikiqtarjuaq, Nunavut
Lucasie Poisey, Greg de Wet, Sarah Crump, and Gordie Audlakiak wrestle a long sediment corer while standing on a snow-covered lake, with their red tent and snowy hills in the background
Sarah Crump, Jonathan Raberg, Darren Larsen, and name TBA show off a newly extracted sediment core from an ice-covered lake in the Grand Tetons
Giff Miller (Sarah's PhD advisor) and Sarah Crump take a lunch break from collecting sediment cores.

So, here's where you come in. With the help of Sarah, her family, and friends, INSTAAR has established a fellowship in her name.

Fundraising thermometer showing $411k of $700K goal. Created at societ.com

1580+ people have contributed as of September 2024

Our shared long-term goal is to raise a $1.5 million endowment to support an annual graduate research fellowship, covering salary and tuition for one CU Boulder graduate student each year. The fellowship will give a boost to their study of Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions and also be a lever for equity and underserved communities.

In May 2023, we reached our first stage goal of $300,000! With the help of 1200+ generous donors, we began supporting a scholar every summer. Many thanks to all who contributed so far. You are more than a donor; you are a friend and a partner in an important initiative that honors Sarah.

Please consider joining us on our second stage goal of $700,000. With your help, we can build an endowment that extends support from summer into the school year. Stage 2 funding will expand our endowment to include salary and benefits for one semester, providing invaluable support to a scholar. We particularly encourage applications from grad students who are members of historically excluded communities.

Questions? Please contact Sarah's PhD advisor, Giff Miller. Thanks!

Sarah Crump, in purple coat, stands in front of a dramatic Baffin Island landscape of colorful tundra suddenly broken by towering cliffs.

For over a decade, Sarah has been a force for good in the earth science world. She was a creative, innovative, communicative, cross-disciplinary scientist who inspired the community to be more inclusive and forward-thinking. Sarah took a lead role in shaping this fellowship; it closely aligns with her values and vision. Please join us in honoring and furthering Sarah’s legacy.

Love,
Nodin de Saillan, John Crump, Liz Anderson, Becky Volenec, and Dan Crump

A personal note from Sarah:

  Science is one of the loves of my life, and I wish with my whole heart that I could continue the work that I started. The opportunity to create a fellowship that enables young women and other underrepresented groups to study earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions is the next best thing. I’m honored to introduce the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship Fund. I have so much confidence in and hope for the next generation of scientists.

16 November 2022